Volare Airlines

If you stood in Milan, Venice or at a holiday airport on the Mediterranean around the turn of the millennium, you have probably seen it without paying much attention: an Airbus A320 with “Volare” titles, later with a web address on the fuselage – “Volareweb.com”. Volare Airlines was one of the most ambitious new ventures in Italian aviation. Swissair came in, a second airline joined, and in 2003 it was meant to become one of Italy’s first low-cost carriers. Barely a year and a half later, everything stood still. This page shows you how Volare came about, which aircraft it flew, how to recognize it on old photos and why the story ended at Alitalia.

Volare Airlines at a glance

Volare Airlines was an Italian airline that was founded in 1997 and flew under its own brand for the last time in January 2009. It was based in Thiene, a small town north of Vicenza in Veneto; administration and the charter business were run from Milan. Behind the founding were the entrepreneur Gino Zoccai and Vincenzo Soddu, a former military pilot who, according to Italian sources, had flown with the Frecce Tricolori aerobatic team.

The name says it all: “volare” simply means “to fly” in Italian. Volare started as a charter airline, scheduled flights were added later, and from 2003 almost everything ran under the low-cost brand Volareweb.com. At its best, Volare formed the Volare Group together with its sister Air Europe – shortly before the 2004 collapse, according to the Italian regional press, with around 1,380 employees and 24 leased aircraft.

Its main airport for much of the time was Milan Malpensa. In between, Milan Linate and Bergamo also played a role, along with scheduled destinations like Venice. Besides Malpensa, the sister Air Europe also used Rome Fiumicino as a second base.

The history in stages

Volare arose in a period of new beginnings. At the end of the 1990s the EU fully opened the air transport market, and in Italy private airlines looked for their niche alongside the national carrier Alitalia. Volare first focused on business with tour operators – the first flights in April 1998 were pure charters from Bergamo and Malpensa, flown with the Airbus A320.

With scheduled flights from May 1999, Volare built a domestic and European network, with connections from Malpensa, Linate and Venice, among others. In doing so Volare pushed into markets where Meridiana and Air One were also fighting for passengers. The charter business remained the foundation, though – and it grew significantly with the purchase of Air Europe.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code VE: appeared in the flight number, on tickets and on departure boards.
• ICAO code VLE: used by air traffic control in the flight plan.
• Callsign VOLA: this is how crews identified themselves on the radio.

A stumbling block for archivists: Italian reference works state that until 2006 Volare used the IATA code VA and the callsign “REVOLA”, and only then switched to VE and “VOLA”. English- and German-language sources, by contrast, give only VE. When you go through old flight plans, expect both variants – and don’t confuse VA with later airlines that received this code after Volare.

Swissair, Qualiflyer and the Volare Group

In August 1998, the SAirGroup, the parent company of Swissair, took 34 percent of Volare. The Swiss were pursuing the so-called Hunter strategy at the time: instead of joining a large alliance, they bought stakes in numerous European airlines, including Sabena, LTU and several French companies. Volare was the Italian building block in this network. Passengers could collect miles in the Qualiflyer frequent flyer program, which belonged to the Swissair group.

In 2000, the shareholders also bought Air Europe, a charter airline founded in 1989 and based in Varese, which was considered the market leader in Italian charter business at the time and also flew to long-haul destinations like Cuba. The two airlines became the holding company Volare Group. What matters for spotters: Air Europe remained its own airline with its own code (IATA PE, ICAO AEL) and flew, among other things, a Boeing 767-300ER in its own colors.

Then came the fall of 2001. After the September 11 attacks, Swissair collapsed, and with it the entire web of stakes. Gino Zoccai bought back the Volare shares for around 50 million euros. Debts rose, and Zoccai later had to give up the majority. New shareholders and banks took over, the accounts were audited, management changed – and with it the strategy.

The fleet: Airbus up front, Boeing as a supplement

At its core, Volare was an Airbus airline. Even the first charter flights in 1998 ran with the Airbus A320, and the A320 family remained the workhorse to the end. At its best, about 15 A320s were in service, some of them from Air Europe’s stock. For long-haul charters, the group used six Airbus A330-200s, which took vacationers to faraway destinations.

Type	Role at Volare	Spotter tip
Airbus A320	Backbone from 1998 to 2009, also at Volareweb	Classic first-generation A320, without sharklets
Airbus A321	A few aircraft for heavily booked routes	Stretched fuselage, four doors per side
Airbus A330-200	Long-haul charter, up to six aircraft	Twinjet widebody, vacation destinations worldwide
Boeing 757-200	In the fleet at times	Narrow and long, tall landing gear
McDonnell Douglas MD-83	Leased at times	Rear-mounted engines, T-tail
Boeing 767-300ER	At the sister Air Europe	Flew in Air Europe colors, not as Volare

The exact numbers differ among sources. Depending on whether you add up Volare and Air Europe and include briefly leased aircraft, reference works arrive at roughly three dozen to almost 50 aircraft over the company’s entire history. What is certain: Volare was a customer of Airbus – Boeing and McDonnell Douglas jets remained the exception.

If you are sorting old pictures and are unsure whether you have an A320 or an A321 in front of you, the guide Telling the A318, A319, A320 and A321 apart helps. The A321 is visibly longer and has an additional door ahead of and behind the wing.

Volareweb.com: the low-cost attempt

In 2003, the new management decided to radically rebuild Volare. Volareweb.com was founded on February 5, 2003, and from the summer schedule – the first flight went on March 30, 2003 – sales ran mainly over the internet. The idea: Italy’s own low-cost carrier, before foreign low-cost airlines divided up the market among themselves. Within a few months, the new brand took over practically all of Volare’s flight operations.

The timing was difficult. At the same time, Ryanair and other low-cost carriers were pushing into Italy; Ryanair was building its own bases there, including at Rome Ciampino. Volareweb had the name of a low-cost carrier but carried the costs and debts of an established charter and scheduled airline. How the model actually works is shown in the post How low-cost carriers work.

In the fall of 2004, the situation became critical. Routes were cut, and according to German reference works the connections to Germany ended on October 16, 2004 – passengers sometimes only found out the evening before. On November 19, 2004, the entire Volare Group, including Air Europe, ceased flight operations. On November 30, 2004, the Volare Group, Volare Airlines and Air Europe went into extraordinary administration, an Italian procedure for large insolvent companies. The group was put up for sale in December 2004. You will find more on this pattern in the post Big airline collapses in Europe.

Bidding contest: Alitalia versus Air One

Under the state-appointed administrator, Volareweb resumed operations on a small scale from June 2005 – with two A320s in Volareweb colors and Air Europe’s 767. The sale ran in parallel. Two bidders faced each other: the national carrier Alitalia and its private rival Air One.

At the end of 2005, Alitalia prevailed, with a purchase price of around 38 million euros. Air One fought the decision legally several times but failed. On April 14, 2006, the companies were merged into the new Volare S.p.A., which belonged to Alitalia; Volareweb and Air Europe were combined under a common air operator certificate, and the employees transferred in May 2006.

In spring 2007, two newly delivered A320s joined the fleet, and Volareweb concentrated on Malpensa and gave up Linate. As of January 1, 2008, the airline was officially an Alitalia subsidiary. That put Volare – without a membership of its own – in the orbit of SkyTeam, the alliance Alitalia belonged to at the time. Passengers now collected miles with MilleMiglia, Alitalia’s program.

The story was not entirely over yet. Under the name CAI-Second, the former Volare continued for a few more years and in the end flew with a single A320 in Alitalia’s network, according to Italian sources also to secure slots at Linate. On February 11, 2015, the company was dissolved and merged into Alitalia. Alitalia’s successor today is ITA Airways.

How to recognize Volare

On old photos, the titles are the surest feature: first “Volare”, from 2003 “Volareweb.com” – an airline writing its web address large on the fuselage was still unusual at the time and typical of the early low-cost years. Because the fleet consisted almost only of the A320 family, you can usually narrow down the type quickly. On long-haul charters it was an A330-200.

Be careful with hybrids: after the takeovers and lease changes, individual aircraft wore transitional liveries, and after 2009 former Volare A320s flew for Alitalia or in Air One colors. How to classify such in-between states is explained in the post on hybrid and mixed liveries.

Volare in everyday spotting today

You will no longer find a flight under the callsign “VOLA” in any tracker today. Volare is purely an archive topic – but a rewarding one. If you photographed in northern Italy, Sardinia, Sicily or at holiday airports around the Mediterranean between 1998 and 2009, you have a good chance of having a Volare A320 on slide, negative or an early memory card. With type, registration, location and date, these become clean entries. The post Archiving aircraft photos offers tips for filing them.

Tracing the aircraft themselves is exciting. Many of Volare’s A320s went back to lessors after the end or kept flying with other operators. Via the registration and serial number, you can follow an aircraft’s life story – how to do that is explained in the guide How old is this aircraft?. If you are at Malpensa today, a detour to the aviation museum Volandia at Milan Malpensa Airport is also worthwhile.

Italy’s private airlines compared

Volare stands in a long line of private Italian airlines that tried their luck alongside Alitalia and eventually disappeared. Air One was the largest of them and merged into Alitalia in 2009. Meridiana from Sardinia became Air Italy in 2018, which gave up in 2020. Wind Jet from Sicily also tried its hand as a low-cost carrier and ceased operations in 2012, and the leisure airline Eurofly ended in 2010. Blue Panorama, among others, survived from that era. Volare differs from all of them in its early Swissair stake and its attempt to adopt the low-cost model as one of the first Italian airlines.

Common mix-ups

• Thinking Volare and Volareweb are two airlines – Volareweb.com was the brand under which Volare Airlines flew from 2003.
• Equating the Italian and the British Air Europe – Volare’s sister was the Italian Air Europe, not the British airline that ceased operations in 1991.
• Logging Air Europe aircraft as Volare – Air Europe had its own codes and its own colors, even within the Volare Group.
• Reading VA as the code of a current airline – in old Italian documents VA can still stand for Volare.
• Thinking Volare was an Alitalia creation – Volare was private until 2006, and Alitalia only came after the insolvency.
• Reading the Air One colors from 2010 as the Air One fleet – some of these A320s originally came from Volareweb.

Conclusion

Volare Airlines was a typical child of its time: founded in the year the market opened, backed by Swissair, grown through the charter business and then, with Volareweb.com, one of the first attempts to establish a low-cost carrier in Italy. The collapse of Swissair, high debts and competition from Ryanair made the project fail in 2004. Under Alitalia, the brand lived on until January 2009. For spotters, what remains is an Airbus airline you recognize by its titles and whose aircraft you can follow to this day via the registration.